


Summerween Memories

by rindomness



Series: The (Mis)Adventures of Sam Reese [4]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence (Gravity Falls), Gen, Halloween, Trick or Treating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27240943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rindomness/pseuds/rindomness
Summary: It's Halloween, and Sam has pulled out all the stops. The fact that she's a college student doesn't deter her from going trick-or-treating, and somehow, Dipper got pulled along for the ride. He hasn't really gone trick-or-treating in a few hundred years, might as well give it a shot!
Relationships: Sam Reese & Alcor the Dreambender
Series: The (Mis)Adventures of Sam Reese [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985777
Kudos: 41





	Summerween Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so, so much to [ToothPasteCanyon (DannyFenton123)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DannyFenton123/pseuds/ToothPasteCanyon) for beta reading this!  
> And, of course, Happy Halloween!

Dipper should have expected this. Really, he should have, and he had plenty of past experience to back it up. A distinguished, powerful, centuries-old demon like him should  _ not _ have screeched like twelve-year-old him whenever Mabel jumped up from behind the couch when Sam sat down beside him at breakfast in her costume.

If it was a costume, he thought briefly, before discarding the idea. No, that was definitely a costume.

“You good?” Silver asked next to him.

“Yep. Yep!” He tried to regain his composure, but the smirk on Sam’s face told him it was too late.

“What, are you scared of a little glitter?”

“Just... surprised, is all!”

“Sam does this every year. This is a new one, though.”

It was exactly the kind of thing Dipper should have expected from the giggling over the past week. Sam was absolutely a different person than Mabel had been, but there was still the energy there, and she had a love of stickers like no one else Dipper had ever met.

Add the fact that today was Halloween and, well...

Sam stood up, turning slowly in a circle. “Do you guys like it?”

The costume itself was hard to discern under the glitter, but the top hat tipped Dipper off. He crossed his arms and frowned, but secretly he was a little impressed. This was exactly the kind of thing Sam would pull, anyway.

“Absolutely,” Silver said. “The glitter’s gonna get everywhere, though.”

Sam waved her hand. “Psshhh, not like the room isn’t already sparkling from last week’s art project.”

The art project in question had been a poster board, and the two of them had bust out a bag of glitter from the craft store in Pineview. Dipper had declined from participating, since even if his form was technically a fake created by him, he couldn’t ever seem to totally get rid of glitter. He was pretty sure he still had glitter in pockets somewhere from Mabel’s projects, even.

“So this is why you were taking a million pictures when you thought I wasn’t looking,” Dipper grumbled. Sam crossed her arms.

“I wanted it to be a surprise, dummy. Do you like it?”

Dipper was impressed. Really, he was. “Yeah, but isn’t that going to invite questions-”

“I’ve already been complimented three times by people I don’t know, so if it invites questions it’ll be more of the ‘how did you learn to sew?’ variety, which are just annoying. I’m happy you like it!” She grinned, sitting back down. “Silver, were you still going trick-or-treating with me?”

“Aren’t you an adult?”

Sam glared at him. “An adult who is short enough to be mistaken for a teenager, and there’s free candy involved, so of  _ course _ I’m going trick-or-treating!”

Dipper held up his hands in a sign of surrender. “Understood. I was not trying to comment on whether or not it was a good idea.”

“Sure you weren’t. Silver?”

Silver looked between them for a moment. “I mean, I’m... a little busy.”

“Boo,” Sam said, slumping in her chair. “It’s not like I can go  _ alone, _ that would just be weird.”

Dipper raised his eyebrows, but didn’t comment.

“What if Tyrone went with you?”

Dipper looked to Silver, a protest already on his tongue, when he saw the look on Sam’s face.

That was the look Sam got when she had an idea, and he wasn’t sure he was a fan of that look with the suggestion.

“That’s... actually not a bad idea. We could match!”

The protest died unspoken in Dipper’s throat.

“That... could actually be fun,” he admitted, smiling. “But where would I get- oh.”

Sam grinned.

“Sam, that’s a really bad ide-”

“Too late, I’m already excited,” she said, and Dipper seriously couldn’t say no to her with that look.

“Alright, alright, I’ll come-”

“Yes!” Sam was grinning, and soon, so was Dipper.

It had been a while since he’d gone trick-or-treating, anyway. It couldn’t be that bad, right?

The group of them had gone through all their classes, and Sam was almost drowning in compliments. Dipper decided that at least part of the credit had to go to him, since she had literally based the costume off of him.

He wasn’t going to say that, of course.

Dipper kind of  _ knew _ that she had learned how to sew from her parents. He hadn’t let his curiosity go further than that, since he really got the feeling that Sam would get mad about him doing that kind of snooping. Still, she was... surprisingly good at it, even if they had a few scares throughout the day when her “wings” got caught in doorways and she got stuck.

“Perhaps the wings weren’t the best idea,” she remarked as she had to walk sideways through the dorm room door, having forgotten it was just slightly too narrow to get through easily.

“I’m impressed they haven’t torn off yet,” Dipper commented, already inside the room. “What with the running into doorways all day.”

“I’m something of an expert,” she said, smiling. “Not that my parents would exactly approve of this use of those skills, but they’re across the country and I’m an adult.”

“An adult who’s going trick-or-treating with a demon?”

“Absolutely.”

“And not one of the multiple parties you got invited to?”

“Free. Candy.” She elaborated, shutting the door once she had gotten inside. “You think I’m gonna get enough candy to last me until Christmas from an adult party?”

“You have this all planned out, don’t you.”

“Of course! I’ve even got a map!”

With that, she pulled out a piece of paper. Dipper took the page, mostly abandoning the human guise as he floated into Sam’s desk chair. It was a map of Pineview, no surprise there, with a route added in blue marker. He could see Sam grinning from over the top of the map, and he lowered it so that he could see her better.

“You’ve been putting a lot of thought into this, haven’t you?”

“Uh,  _ duh, _ it’s my first time away from home, which means I don’t have to listen to my parents when they say I’ve had enough and, ‘no, we  _ can’t _ stop at the werewolf’s house, that’s dangerous,’ blah blah blah pro-nat bullshit,” she said, making a face. “Seriously. Janelle was way nicer than them and it’s all their fault she had to live at the edge of town-”

“Jeez, how did you come out of there without all of their prejudices?”

“Knowing Silver, mostly. But that’s beside the point! Now, no one can stop me from going all over town and staying up as late as I want!”

She was grinning the grin of a person who was going to crash after two hours and need to come back home to sleep, complaining the whole way, Dipper decided.

“We’re getting dinner first, though, right?”

“Why are you concerned about it?”

“Because, while I know  _ I _ can, you cannot survive solely off of sugar.”

“Alright, we can get dinner first, but then we’re going out! Trick-or-treating awaits us!”

Dipper snorted. “Of course. Are you planning on driving or do you want me to blip us-”

“Driving. That way, we don’t risk throwing up on the way back!”

“Are you planning on eating candy as you go?”

Sam didn’t respond to it.  _ Yes, _ her expression told him.  _ I absolutely do. _

“Let’s go, we’re wasting valuable trick-or-treating time!”

In her excitement to get dinner and then leave campus, Sam forgot that the door wasn’t wide enough for the wings sewn onto the back of her coat, and came to a sudden stop in the doorway as they caught. Dipper coughed back laughter. She backed into the room and glared at him, straightening her glittery top hat.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me,” she said, before going through the door and dashing down the hall. Dipper followed her at a slower pace, careful to remember to tuck in his own wings as he went through.

He didn’t need Sam laughing at him over doing the exact same thing, now that he was, as far as campus was concerned, “in costume.”

He waved to Silver as they passed, and they looked at him.

“You’re really doing it, aren’t you?”

“Of course! If nothing else, it’s a good excuse to see how far I can push it.”

“Push what, exactly?”

He pointed to himself and grinned. “We’ll see you tonight, I have to go make sure Sam doesn’t get stuck on the way out. Seeya, Silver!”

He followed Sam down the hall, just in time to see her run into the door out and get stopped by the doorway.

* * *

The drive down to Pineview was quiet, save for Sam practically vibrating in her seat. They had discovered pretty fast that she couldn’t drive with the wings, so her coat was folded in the backseat, wings sticking out on either side. As they parked near Sam’s first spot on the map, they got out, Sam putting the coat back on. She backed up, carefully avoiding slamming the door on her wings.

Dipper tossed one of the canvas bags he had taken from the Mindscape at Sam, and it smacked her in the face. She caught it before it fell to the ground, and she glared at him.

“Warn me first!”

“I’m not sure how you expected to go trick-or-treating without something to carry candy in. Either way, it fits the theme you decided we were going with.”

Sam unfolded it, and Dipper smirked as her expression went through annoyance,, then confusion, then excitement.

“Where did you get these?”

“Stan ‘gave’ me a few back when the Library opened,” Dipper explained. “He still sold a few things, early on, before the Library bit managed to pay for itself.”

“Neat,” she said, before the full weight of what he had said hit her. “Wait, these are from the actual Stanley Pines Memorial Library when it  _ opened? _ ”

Dipper grinned. “Oh, yes.”

Sam grinned. “Silver’s gonna  _ flip _ when we get back. Speaking of, let’s go! Night’s a-wasting!”

She set off down the street, and Dipper glanced in the car window, making sure that he looked human enough to get away with going as... well, himself. He pulled his hat closer to his head and nodded, following after Sam.

They stuck out among the actual kids who were out trick-or-treating, although Dipper caught sight of a recurring group of teenagers who had the same idea Sam had. Sam, of course, had no reservations about being out in full costume trick-or-treating.

Dipper noticed the looks they were getting, though. He didn’t care so much, since he was having fun with the acting challenge - after all, he was pretending to be a human pretending to be himself - but he wasn’t sure how the glances from parents of young kids would impact Sam. Dipper was pretty sure Sam wasn’t paying attention to them, but the few times he had risked a look at her aura, her colors seemed to be getting more blue. So, she was probably aware of the looks, and was either not paying attention to the way they were making her feel, or she was putting on an act.

So long as Sam was having fun, though, he wasn’t going to get in anyone’s face.

Dipper and Sam went door-to-door, Sam occasionally checking her map. As it continued to get later into the night, the less looks they seemed to be getting, though that might have been because there were less people around. By the time they were hitting the last leg of Sam’s route, there were only a few groups aside from them still out.

Sam seemed to be getting more tired, and she was using most of her focus to keep her bag up and not running into things.

“Do you want to head back?” Dipper asked, cautiously.

“No way, we still have a whole set of houses to go,” Sam turned to look at him.

“Alright, but I don’t know if you should be driving on the way back.”

“It’s fine.”

Dipper frowned and hazarded a glance at her aura. They were mostly dull colors, blues and purples and greens, with a few brighter streaks of pale reds or sharp pinks.

He changed track. “You have enough to last you for a few months there, I think.” That was true, at least. The appeal of matching themes, along with the quality of their costumes (in Sam’s case, anyway) had gotten the pair of them a good haul.

Sam wasn’t done yet, though.

“One more house, at least?”

Dipper looked down the street.

“We can do one more. But then we’re going back to the car.”

“Alright.”

The pair of them walked up to the door, and Sam rang the doorbell. Dipper heard it echoing inside, and the footsteps approaching the door. As it opened, Sam grinned.

“Trick or treat!” She called, Dipper echoing her a moment after.

The man who had opened the door was older, and looked between the two of them with first a look of surprise, then confusion.

“Uh... right. Aren’t you... a little old?”

Dipper saw the grin go from genuine, if tired, on Sam’s face to immediately forced.  _ Uh-oh. _

“We’re out. I guess Madison just forgot to turn off the light. Why don’t you go back to your Twin Souls forums? I know I’ve heard Tammi talking about those.”

Dipper held back the desire to show this guy a piece of his mind. For the moment. Instead, the only external sign of his annoyance was his eye twitching. He saw the blush rise to Sam’s face, and it was harder and harder to avoid stepping up and explaining to this guy why he didn’t talk to Sam like that.

He took a deep breath, and plastered on a business smile.

“Apologies. Maybe you should remember to turn off the light yourself if you don’t want people at your door on Halloween. C’mon, this guy is too good for us, anyway,” Dipper said to Sam. She turned to look at him, and he almost let the few human traits he was still retaining fall.

She looked  _ heartbroken. _

This guy needed to know why he didn’t mess with Dipper’s Mizar-

Not right now. He took a deep breath he didn’t technically need and waved to the man at the door, leading Sam away from it. He heard the door slam behind them.

“What a jerk,” Dipper said, keeping his tone casual in an attempt to lighten the mood. “What’s his deal, huh?”

Sam didn’t respond for a while.

“Am... am I really too old for this?”

Oh no.

“No way. He’s just an old grump-”

“It wasn’t just him, though. People have been staring at us all night!”

“Okay, so maybe it’s not exactly  _ typical _ to see older kids trick-or-treating. Big deal. As long as it’s still fun, why stop?”

“It’s not as fun when everyone’s judging you.”

Dipper mentally cursed. He was going to have a  _ talk _ with that guy. Maybe set one of the Flock on him for the night.

Right now, though, Sam needed him, and he had to remember how to do this.

“...Hey, I think I might have an idea. Let’s get back to the car first, though, so that you don’t pass out standing up.”

Sam snickered, slightly, and it sounded weird and choked-up. Like she was crying. Oh, no.

“Alright.”

They walked back to the car in silence, Dipper quietly considering what kind of nightmares he’d be sending the way of the person who made Mizar cry.

Sam sat in the driver’s seat, the light from a streetlamp filtering in through the windshield. Her coat was left in the backseat, along with both of their bags. The glitter from her hat sparkled around the car. Dipper was quiet, watching her.

“A couple weeks ago you asked me what it meant for you to be Mizar.”

Sam looked up, tears in her eyes, confusion and interest written across her face.

“The technical definition is a little loose and a little bit wrong, but they’ve got the gist of it pretty much down. Mizar is my twin. Generally, a sort of... sister figure.”

“Right,” Sam’s voice was shaky.

“The first Mizar was a woman named Mabel Pines. You might recognize that name.”

“Mabel Pines. Took over the Stanley Pines Memorial Library. Yeah. She’s- she’s kind of important as far as twenty-first century history goes.”

“Yeah. She was also my sister.”

“Well, if she was Mizar-”

“She was literally my twin sister.” Dipper leaned back in the seat. “The summer of 2012, our parents sent us up to Gravity Falls to spend the summer with our Great-Uncle Stan. Mabel loved it immediately. I had a little more trouble getting used to it. But... for lots of reasons, I wouldn’t be the person I am now if it weren’t for that summer.”

Sam was quiet, watching him.

“It might come as a surprise, but Mabel’s favorite holiday was Halloween. So, imagine her delight to find out that Gravity Falls celebrated it not once, but twice a year. Once in October, and once in July. Of course she wanted to go trick-or-treating in July!” He smiled at the memory. “I... was being a little more stuck on it. I was twelve, and got invited to a party by one of our teenage friends, and thought it would be cool to go to it. It’s kind of silly, but I really wanted to be seen as mature and grown-up.”

“Seriously?” Sam laughed, a little, teary and messy. Dipper grinned.

“Oh, yeah. So, I tried to get out of trick-or-treating. It didn’t work, and there was a monster and we all almost got eaten, but that’s not the point of this story.” He looked at Sam, who was sitting up in her seat, listening quietly. “The point is that I was caring too much what people thought to have fun with it. And, yeah, there are times when professionalism is required and you have to at least behave like an adult. At some point, people will probably just stop giving you candy. There’s not really a way to avoid that, it’s part of growing up.”

Sam looked down, the pinpricks of light bouncing off her hat shifting with the movement.

“But,” Dipper continued, “that doesn’t mean that you have to give it up entirely. I can’t see a reason not to dress up in elaborate costumes at  _ least _ once a year, and hey, if you want to do stuff with people, you can host your own parties. I’ve almost certainly got some really bad horror films from the early 2000s lying around somewhere in the Mindscape,” he said, eliciting a laugh. “Seriously. They’re  _ bad _ , even by pre-Transcendence standards.”

Sam was smiling, now, and she wiped at her eyes. “I’d like that.”

“We could probably even get Silver to take a break and watch a couple with us, and it’s not like we don’t have a bunch of sweet, unhealthy food in the backseat to eat while we’re watching them.”

“We don’t have a TV in the dorm,” Sam said.

“I’ll take all your Snickers in exchange for getting a TV in the dorm,” Dipper responded. Sam snickered.

“Alright, fine,” she said. “But it’s gotta be a TV we can actually watch your movies on.”

Dipper grinned. “What would be the point if I didn’t? I know I’m a demon but I’m just trying to solve a technicality problem.”

Sam was smiling. “You also scammed Silver out of a week’s worth of hard candy for a blank book two weeks ago.” Dipper grinned.

“Hey, that’s not my fault, I’m not the one who worded the deal.”

Sam snorted.

“So, the Snickers in my bag - the one I was carrying around all night, you can’t pick after the fact which was mine and which was yours - for a TV we can watch bad pre-Transcendence horror movies on, in the dorm room?”

“Sounds good to me,” Dipper said, holding out a hand to her. She paused for a moment, before shaking it. Electric blue flames shot up for a moment, before they extinguished. Dipper tipped his hat.

“Pleasure doing business, Mizar.”

“You’re dramatic, Alcor.”

He grinned, and she rolled her eyes. As she started the car, he took a moment to check her aura.

There were still some blues and greens in there, but for the most part, it was a content orange. He smiled.

The drive back up to campus was quiet, broken up occasionally by Sam’s sniffling, as they drove up. They parked in front of her dorm building.

“I’ll meet you up there,” Dipper said.

“Yeah. And uh... thanks, Alcor. For coming trick-or-treating with me. And... and for making me feel better.”

Dipper smiled. “Hey, I care about you, and that guy was a big-time jerk. And, uh,” he said. Sam unbuckled her seatbelt and looked to Dipper. “you can call me Dipper, for the record.”

Sam blinked, before smiling. “Then, thanks, Dipper. This... was still one of the best Halloweens I’ve had.”

Dipper smiled. “I’ll be up there with movies, alright? I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“Yeah, see you upstairs,” Sam said. Dipper disappeared to the Mindscape to look for some of the funny-worst movies he could find.

He re-appeared on the physical plane in the middle of the dorm room, causing Silver to jump in surprise. Their eyes looked to the old, early-2000s TV sitting under the window, and then to the box in Dipper’s arms.

“How’d it go?”

Dipper shrugged. “It went well, up until someone commented at the end of the night. We were going to watch some bad Halloween movies from the early 2000s, want to join us?”

Silver looked to their tablet, and then to the old TV sitting on the floor.

“Why not?”

Sam came into the room, and offered Dipper one of the bags. He took it, and she settled down on the floor next to Dipper. Slightly below him, actually, since he was floating, sitting cross-legged a couple inches off the ground.

“So what do you want to watch first? We’ve got... ‘Nearly Almost Dead but Not Quite’, ‘Alien Guy in Screamville’, ‘My Mummy’s a Werewolf’... jeez, I forgot how bad these are,” Dipper said, sorting through the box.

“The stupidest one you have,” Sam said.

By the time they went to bed, it was well past midnight, the magically-powered TV set against one wall still running bad, centuries-old Halloween movies.

In the end, Dipper forgot about his nightmare plans until the next day.

**Author's Note:**

> Do I know that Halloween is three days from now? Yes.  
> Do I care? No.  
> Hope you enjoyed my early Halloween content!  
> Again, thank you to [ToothPasteCanyon (DannyFenton123)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DannyFenton123/pseuds/ToothPasteCanyon) for beta-reading!


End file.
